


Down In Mexico

by Scylla



Category: Fast and the Furious (2001)
Genre: Alternate Ending, M/M, Mexico
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Scylla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate ending to The Fast & The Furious (2001 film), disregarding any of the film canon that follows. Brian ends up in Mexico tracking a missing person. Somehow, though, things always seem to come back around...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down In Mexico

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Gillian Ferringway was loaded. Or rather, her _family_ was loaded. At seventeen, she picked the week after Christmas to run away from her ivy league home. Not necessarily the most dramatic news item, had her destination not been nearly 2,000 miles away in Monterrey, Mexico.

She had the cash, the passport, the determination, and about as much street sense as any insular lovestruck teenager. Gillian smelled freedom and glamour in the offer that led her south. Unfortunately, the man she'd come to know over months of midnight chatroom confessionals was anything but genuine. Gillian's last sighting had been less than forty-eight hours ago at _Aeropuerto Del Norte_ , getting into a nondescript white sports car.

Normally, she wouldn't even qualify yet as a missing person. Only one thing set her apart from the thousands of girls who went missing in the United States: she was a senator's daughter, whose mother had a few favors to call in. Contact for ransom had not yet been made. A team of agents were quietly dispatched to Gillian's last known whereabouts. Still in the agency's ill graces even a few years after letting Dom escape, Brian O'Connor received the assignment because nobody else wanted it... and partially because he was good at bullshitting the sort of people they expected to intercept. He'd proved that.

Brian never looked like he belonged to the world he traveled in, and that illogically _worked_ for him. His clean, twentysomething pop model looks were to his advantage - his targets either dismissed him as someone's idiotic lackey, or assumed he was a bigger predator than he appeared.

Brian moved along a shady sidewalk in Monterrey, stirring pigeons from his path in an explosion of white wings. They settled across the street, only to be disturbed again by a knot of adolescents in bright tee shirts. The neighborhood was shabby, trimmed in patchy wrought iron and busy with people in the pleasant evening cool. Anywhere else but a city with such a polyglot patchwork culture, he would have immediately drawn attention. However, Monterrey's massive industrial business presence meant that his pale complexion was just one of many. His relatively unkempt, jetlagged exterior only heightened his ability to blend in. To the busy Friday-night crowd, Brian O'Connor was just another overworked grunt on a weekend pleasure-binge.

None of them saw his surreptitious glances. None of them knew he'd spent the previous night committing photos to memory on a long red-eye flight from LA. If a ransom call didn't come in soon, the rescue was looking more and more like a recovery. Nobody wanted that on their resume. The smiling, dark-haired girl in the photos slipped through Brian's thoughts.

It wasn't going to be on _his_ resume.

Brian turned the corner onto _Calle Juan Alvarez_ as the city purpled into true dusk. He stepped into the doorway of an apricot adobe and checked his watch. Brian's contact indicated that the car Gillian had been seen with was sighted in this area several times, always around six-thirty.

 _White sports car, my ass,_ Brian thought smugly, _the guys at HQ wouldn't know a Nissan 350Z if it ran 'em over._ He knew the vehicle make even from the blurry airport security photos, and it was simple enough to put out some careful tendrils for the car. In an area filled with Honda Civics and shitty pickups, the Nissan would be easy to spot and follow. Brian waited, slouching in the doorway with a sleepy expression of disinterest. He watched the street and the moving knots of people, breathing slowly.

A hollow metallic pulse startled Brian out of his zenlike concentration. He leaned out, then jerked back as a sleek red Chevelle glided slowly through the busy street. Brian's fingers whitened on the corner of the thick doorway, pulse racing in his throat as he watched the car. It wasn't Dom. _Couldn't be._ Certainly that wasn't the only muscle car in the city. _Don't blow your cover._ Yet the sound awakened an awareness that had lain dormant for years. Any moment, Brian expected Dom to appear.

He'd cared for Mia. He _had._ But absolutely nothing could compare to Dom. As the man's sister so neatly summarized, Dom was like gravity. Everyone got yanked into his solar system eventually, and it was up to you to decide how to feel about that. Brian's feelings for Mia were no less genuine for that, yet... when everything went so wrong, he found himself missing Dom and the quiet hours in the garage, more than all of Mia's fire and sweetness. Even now, the thought made his chest tighten and his stomach flip.

Sometimes, Brian thought about searching for him. But he had a shattered reputation to piece together, an army of angry government assholes who wouldn't let him out of their sight, and nowhere to go. Besides, if he found Dom, what would he say? And how could he know that someone wouldn't follow him right to wherever the man turned up?

In a split second, a massive hand closed around Brian's throat and a huge body blocked out the night. Brian's assailant crowded him into the corner of the doorway and stood over him, his palm just putting enough pressure on Brian's windpipe to be uncomfortable. Around them, the crowd scuttled on, deliberately oblivious to what was happening in the shadows. If they couldn't see it, it didn't matter what they heard.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't snap your neck," Dominic Toretto growled.

Brian gasped, struggled, and went limp. His mind raced, too flooded with adrenaline to function beyond yammering in shock. "Because I'm not here to catch your ass?" he said, whispering with what air he could get.

After what seemed an eternity, Dom released his grip.

When he leaned forward and kissed Brian, hard and hungry in the dark space, all Brian could do was hold on.

*****

For an hour, nobody talked. Brian remembered fooling around with Dom once or twice in the shop, back when everything seemed easy as getting a ticket on a straightaway. Brian was used to sex with dudes; apparently Dom wasn't. He fought it, wouldn't talk about it, pretended like it hadn't happened... then did it again. Heat built every time they were in one another's company. Over and over Dom said, _I don't do this, I never do this,_ while he was kissing Brian hard up against the garage wall.

Brian knew he was still having sex with Letty, back then. Part of him felt a little guilty. ...Not _that_ guilty, but a little.

Now? Dom must have been doing some thinking, wherever he'd been hiding, and things were different. At Dom's nearly silent insistence, Brian followed Dom to the Chevelle (yes, of course it was his) and he delivered Brian to what passed for Dom's apartment.

This time, Dom approached him slowly, asking permission with his body. Brian knew what he was supposed to be doing. Gillian. The job. That girl--how could he even _think_ of--?

Rough hands cradled Brian's temples with surprising tenderness. The feeling of carefully reserved strength behind the touch melted Brian past the call of duty, and the curve of his body bowed into Dom. He allowed himself to be pressed down onto the battered couch; allowed Dom to strip his shirt from his skin and cover Brian's body with his own.

Brian noticed, with a fleeting, soaring joy, that he'd left the light on.

Later on, when both men had recovered enough to think clearly, Dom leveled an intent glare on Brian and said, "Don't think this makes up for L.A."

Reality ground home like a bootheel in the chest, taking the air out of Brian's lungs. He knew that would come. He'd expected it to come on the street when Dom could have choked the life from him.

"Nothing's gonna make up for that," Brian conceded miserably. No further accusation came, as if Dom had just been making sure Brian still remembered how badly he'd fucked over the team.

"So if you're not after me, what [i]are[/i] you down here for?" Dom asked.

Brian laid it out for him.

"I was looking for this car to show up - a white Nissan 350z. Last pictures we got of Gillian, she was getting into one of those."

"Julio," Dom muttered, " _shit._ "

*****

"You don't belong down here, O'Connor." Dom's voice was flat and tight with anger. He pushed a hand north, back the way Brian had come. "You ain't gonna help that girl, not you. Gonna get you **both** killed."

"Oh, come _on,_ Dom," Brian protested in exasperation, "Quit wasting my damn time trying to tell me what to do. You know I'm not gonna listen." He turned a little to follow Dom's restless pacing. The room was lit by just one humming yellow sodium bulb. Dom slid in and out of the light as he paced, dark eyes catching it.

 _Wolf,_ Brian thought illogically, and felt the little thrum of heat in the pit of his stomach all over again. Deliberate, he recalled the smiling snapshot of Gillian. The sensation went cold.

Dom continued, watching Brian shrewdly. His gaze was penetrating, calculating. "Just because you bullshit a bunch of gearheads into thinking you were all right, now you think you're gonna walk into some drug runner's palace and take her back?" he raised both eyebrows and moved in on Brian, who struggled to keep his expression skeptical and calm.

"That's the plan," Brian replied. Warring with dual urges to lift his chin and tuck it defensively, he kept his head as still as possible.

Dom turned away from him with a snort of disgust, took two steps away, then pivoted. Took three steps back, until he was close enough to kiss.

He didn't. Instead, he pressed the tips of his fingers to Brian's chest and pushed him back. "Still a buster. Still going places you got no business being, doing things you got no business doing. _Stupid._ " Another move into Brian's space; another shove. "This ain't your territory." Step. Shove. " _Ain't_ L.A. Ain't no SWAT team to save your ass when you get slaughtered." Step. Shove. "When you get that _girl_ slaughtered."

This time, as he was moving into Brian's space, Brian shoved back. It must have been what Dom was waiting for, as suddenly Brian found himself rammed hard against the wall just a foot behind his back. The back of his head cracked against the ancient plaster, and a shower of chips rained down from above.

Brian and Dom glared at one another in silence for a few moments.

"You got any better ideas?" Brian demanded.

Dom tilted his head, slow and angry. "You get the rest of those damn feds outta here. Diego ain't sniffed 'em out yet, but if he does, that girl's dead. Already risking that, just you _being_ here with me. He's a stupid little kid, but he's got his father's thugs."

"All right," Brian snapped, raising his hands in defeat, "then what?"

"You let me handle it," Dom said after a pause, "I'm one of 'em."

*****

Brian winced at the cool metal pressed against the back of his head. The spot was already tender from its collision with the wall the night before. He knew Dom's finger was not on the trigger, but bitter adrenaline still lay on the back of his tongue as he staggered, tripped, and fell to his knees in Juliano Diego's living room.

Spanish flowed over Brian's head for a few minutes. He was able to pick out a few words and phrases, but really had nothing but Dom's explanation earlier to know what was being said.

Everyone is subject to an occasional ill-timed moment of self realization. Kneeling on Diego's carpet with Dom's gun aimed at his skull, listening to him carry out their ruse, Brian knew his trust in Dom was total. He had more faith in a fugitive than he had in the team he'd sent packing.

"What are you doing, Julio?" Dom asked in English, his voice dark with disgust, "your family, your father, how does **he** like you stealing little girls?"

"She is the daughter of a rich American _ojete_ ," Juliano retorted in heavily accented English, "If I can get a million dollars for her, my father won't _care_. He will be proud of me. You understand?"

Brian kept his eyes down, trying to look like he'd been punched in the kidneys.

Dom gestured at Brian with his free hand, the muzzle of his handgun still nosing in Brian's hair. "You got American _cops_ down here sniffing around. What, you gonna make us all kill cops for you now, so you make some more money scaring little girls?"

Brian's gaze flicked up. Juliano suddenly looked uncertain. And _young._ He seemed to realize just how badly he'd fucked up, his whole frame loosening with defeat. "You think American cops come down here, look for her? Besides this one?" Juliano waved at Brian.

"Let her go, Julio," Dom demanded, in the kind of firm, understanding voice Brian might use to talk someone off a ledge, "this cop can take her back with him. He'll say whatever we tell him to say. So I don't put a bullet in his brain." The latter was for him, Brian realized, and he schooled his expression into one of desperation before lifting his head.

"Yeah, yeah! Whatever you tell me just please, don't kill me. I got a kid. A little baby. I don't wanna die."

Dom cuffed him a little with the gun muzzle. "Shut up!" he barked. Brian wobbled believably and lapsed into silence. _Bastard,_ he thought at Dom, _you're enjoying this, admit it._

He felt, rather than saw Juliano's regard shift to him.

"You tell the Americans you found her? You didn't find anyone with her? You tell her to say the same thing?"

 _So damn young,_ Brian thought. He marveled for a moment that someone so naive could have pulled off a kidnapping on this grand a scale. Dumb luck, he decided. Brian bobbed his head emphatically and swallowed hard. "Yeah! Whatever you want. We won't say anything," he agreed, not meaning a word, and held his breath.

A more wary, less desperate man would have demanded some sort of proof, or realized the deal was not in his favor and found some other way to get what he wanted. But Juliano Diego was a frightened young man, probably abused his father's power, took what he wanted, and got in over his head. He was still young enough to expect even horrible mistakes to get 'fixed' if he put everything back the way it was and said he was sorry.

Juliano made a call, and in ten minutes Gillian appeared, looking pale and tiny in the company of her guards. She seemed about as physically unscathed as any kidnapping victim could expect to be. Brian's heart thundered against his ribs.

"All right, Julio," Dom said, sounding satisfied, "you leave the rest of this to me." He said something else in fluid spanish that sounded comforting, then thumped Brian lightly with the muzzle of his gun.

"Get up," Dom commanded. Brian did, keeping his hands warily out and up. He turned to look at Dom briefly, who scowled at him.

Dom gestured towards the door with a flick of the gun. "Now _move,_ he ordered, and Brian went to Gillian; helped her out into the foyer and from there to Dom's Chevelle.

"That was _way_ too easy," Brian commented from backseat, where he'd folded a frightened, bawling Gillian in his arms. He looked up to meet Dom's eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Don't worry," Dom grunted, "it'll get harder. Once we get her on a plane, I gotta get outta here. This is your fault, so you're coming." He turned over the engine and rapidly circled the villa's driveway, tires squealing as he exited onto the avenue nearly at highway speed.

Brian, who'd been reaching for his cellular phone, glanced up once again. "You want me to _stay_ down here?"

"If things get messy, I need a hostage," Dom replied. Brian couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

*****

Gillian departed with the rest of Brian's team in tow. He called the bureau, explained the situation briefly (carefully edited to remove all traces of Dom), and gave them Juliano Diego's position. What little good it would do them. Criminals generally fled to Mexico for a _reason_.

He had a few details to clean up in Monterrey, Brian said. He closed the phone and left it in the grass beside the chain link fence. By the time the battery stopped transmitting his position, he'd be long gone.

On the back side of the airstrip, Brian watched Gillian walk across the tarmac to the jet. He turned back to the Chevelle, and climbed into the passenger seat. Smiled at Dom.

"So you need a hostage, huh?"

One hand caught the back of Brian's neck and dragged him across the bench seat. It didn't _stop_ yanking until he was straddling Dom's lap, one hand clenching the backrest on either side of his head. The Chevelle rocked on suspension with a shriek of protest.

"You gotta cut out roughhousing me, or I'm gonna make a run for it," Brian threatened. His tone had been playful, but Dom's expression sobered.

"Sure you don't wanna go back? They'll probably give you a gold star. Girl didn't even get hurt," Dom said.

"I got things to straighten out here," Brian replied, "like getting your ass outta dodge before 'Julio' and his daddy come down on you like a ton of bricks. They're gonna know you helped the US feds."

"And I gotta get _your_ ass outta Mexico before this country eats you alive," Dom laughed.

"I can take care of myself," Brian protested, shifting out of Dom's lap.

Dom's answer was acceleration hard enough to shove Brian against the seat, and long double contrails of dust.


End file.
